The National Security Agency (NSA), the organisation that Edward Snowden accused of spying on people and politicians in the United States, suggests Android and iPhone users should restart their smartphones once every few days.
According to Forbes, a recently revealed NSA document dating years back shares best practices for keeping your smartphone safe from threat actors and suggests that restarting your phone now and then can help with some zero-day exploits and malware that might be running on your phone. NSO Group, the company behind the Pegasus spyware is also known for using zero-day exploits to spy on its targets.
The phones mentioned in the document are from the early 2010s and consist of iPhones with the home button and some Samsung Galaxy devices, but the advice still holds some weight.
It may not be foolproof, but according to the NSA, restarting your device can help prevent some attacks from being successful. The document has around a dozen more pieces of advice on how to keep your phone safe, but most of them are common practices like “consider using biometrics” and stick to “original charging cables” to name a few.
Restarting your phone can also help fix memory leaks and buggy apps that may be causing issues on your device. If you are lazy, some phone manufacturers also offer a built-in option to help you schedule restarts.
Source Credit: https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/